TONS of Tips! -- Five Great 'Teacher Tips' Sites on the Web

Education World introduces you to a few of the best "teacher tips" sites on the Web. In these sites you'll find hundreds of practical tips -- tried and tested tips from teachers willing to share. So sit back, get ready for a sampling of tips from these sites. (But remember, this sampling is just the "tip" of the iceberg.) Then explore the sites in more depth and find tips to motivate your students, organize your classroom, and much, much more!

Nothing is more conducive to a peaceful and productive year for you and your students than successful classroom management. Classroom management, however, seldom depends on a solid grasp of educational content or on the originality of an integrated curriculum. It's usually a result of successfully dealing with the nitty-gritty -- the 1,000 small moments that arise throughout the day.

No one knows more about successful classroom management than teachers who struggle with it on a daily basis. This week, Education World brings you the benefit of their experience as we explore six of the best "teacher tips" sites and sample the practical teacher-generated tips we found at each of them. Most of these sites offer you the opportunity to share your own ideas and tips, so be our guests! Join in the fun and make these great sites even greater!

BUSY BEE ACTIVITY PAGE

We begin our exploration at the Busy Bee Activity Page. This site, maintained by Canadian teacher Kevin Kearney, contains a number of teacher-tested activities you can use from the first day of school to the last. Tips are arranged within a number of topics and categories. Below is a sampling of the tips Kearney has compiled:

• First Day of School -- Another Time Capsule Idea. Have the kids write a letter to themselves. In that letter, have them describe how they feel about being in their present grade, what they think they will be learning during the year, who their "best" friends will be, what they would like [the teacher] to do during the year, and so on. Put the letters in a potato chip can and seal it. Reopen the can during the last week of school so students can reread their time capsule letters.
• Classroom Management Tips -- Open House Ideas. On each group of four tables, put a clear plastic cup containing a goldfish. After your opening remarks to parents, provide foot-long thermometers -- or whatever you have -- and tell the parents to take the temperature of the goldfish. This is a great ice breaker! (By the way, to get the fish temperature all you have to do is take the temperature of the water; the cold-blooded fish is the same temperature.)
• Elementary -- Portfolio Holders. Use large cereal boxes. Have each child cover and decorate the box with self-created artwork. Cover the artwork with contact paper. The box can be used throughout the year to hold paper projects, audiotapes, and videotapes.
• Computer -- Computer in the Classroom. Create a database with students' information. Include fields for first and last name, middle initial, phone number, parents' names, and so on. Once the information is in the database, it can be used to make desk tags, locker tags, birthday cards, certificates, labels for each student, report card comments, and on and on and on.

When you're done reading other teachers' secrets on Kearney's site, click the bullseye to share your own!

WORKS4ME TIP LIBRARY

One of the most comprehensive sites we found for classroom management tips is the NEA's Works4Me Tips Library. Here, you'll find more than 400 archived tips from the NEA's Works4Me Classroom Tip of the Week, an e-mail message sent weekly to subscribers. Teacher-tested tips are organized into seven categories. On the Tips Library site, click on the following categories to read teachers' tips:

• Teaching Techniques. A first-day assignment I use with my students is to have them interview one another. After I start class with a mini lesson on asking questions and follow-up questions, I have them line up by birthday without talking, only communicating by hand signals. Then I split the line in two and have them pair up with a person across from them. They interview their partners and take notes. The next day I ask each student to bring in a picture, and the students introduce each other by reading the interview and posting it with the picture on the bulletin board.
• Getting Organized. To prevent a mix-up of puzzle pieces from different puzzles, I label the back of each puzzle piece and the box or puzzle tray with an identifying mark. For example, a puzzle of a kitten will have a K on each puzzle piece and also on the box. This helps me when children choose to work different puzzles on the same table and the pieces get mixed together.
• Managing Your Classroom. I've included a small picture of each child on my seating charts with tape under each for when I change seating. I staple a sheet of transparency film over the chart and can make notes on the transparency. This is also a great help for substitutes, who can quickly put the face and name together.
• Relationships. In the fall, we hold the traditional open house for parents to meet the teachers. One idea that has worked well for me is to videotape the students working on a project a few days prior to the open house. I keep the video short (four to five minutes) and make an effort to film every student at least three times. Parents love it, and my evening is far more relaxed spending part of each period narrating video rather than my presentation being the center of attention for the whole period.
• Using Technology. I've developed lesson plans for using newspaper editorial cartoons as a teaching tool in social studies, art, journalism, and English from elementary through high school. My husband, a syndicated cartoonist, created our Web site, which includes current cartoons from 24 editorial cartoonists.

There are still 400-plus tips left in the Library! When you've reviewed those tips and implemented the best ones, don't forget to submit a tip of your own!

TAMMY'S TECHNOLOGY TIPS FOR TEACHERS

You'll find tips -- many, many tips -- for using technology for classroom management at Tammy's Technology Tips for Teachers. Tammy Worcester, an instructional technology specialist for the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK), provides ideas for many creative and useful ways for making technology one of your classroom management techniques. The site includes directions on how to

• create and manage computer learning stations;
• use a template to design student projects;
• create an electronic portfolio;
• create a database of integrated technology activities;
• use a ClarisWorks database to document sources of text and graphics taken from the Internet;
• design a technology workshop;
• use a spreadsheet to create a word search;
• design, proof, and publish a school newspaper;
• create on-line databases using FileMaker Pro;
• create a hyperlink hot list.

Take a look at the tips Tammy provides. If you have one to add, why not drop her an e-mail?

TEACHNET.COM'S HOW-TO TOPICS PAGE

At Teachnet.com's How-To Topics Page, you'll find many ideas submitted by teachers to the Teacher-2-Teacher listserv. The tips are arranged by topic within categories; the categories include Classroom Decor, Classroom Management, Getting Organized, Classroom PR, and Back to School. Here are just several of the teacher tips you'll find in this great resource. But, remember, these tips are just the "tip" of the iceberg!

• Classroom Management -- SURPRISE! Pick out a surprise activity, such as an extra recess or a small treat, then write "SURPRISE" on the chalkboard. Throughout the day, if the class gets noisy or students are out of their seats without permission, erase a letter starting at the end of the word. Add missing letters when everyone is behaving well. If the complete word is intact at the end of the day, students get the surprise.
• Getting Organized -- Organize Those Stacks of Paper. You've got bunches of papers held together with those giant-sized paper clips, and the stack is so thick, the clip is all twisted out of shape. Use spring-type clothespins instead. They stick out to the side when you have all the stacks piled up on your desk, and you can tape scraps of paper to the clothespins to identify what's in the stack.
• Classroom P.R. -- Weekly Parent Activity. Our school is installing a Parent-Teacher Hotline, a telephone system that allows teachers to record messages to their parents. Parents can call in, enter the classroom I.D. number, and hear the teacher's message regarding homework, upcoming activities, permission slips that need to be returned, etc. We'll be using ours to include a Home Activity for the Week, a simple learning activity designed to involve parents in the learning/teaching process. But you don't need a high-tech scheme to pull this off. Dream up a short activity, run off copies, and send it home with students.
• Back-to-School -- To Tell the Truth. Have each student write down three sentences describing himself or herself. For example: "I have attended 11 schools," "I have an aunt and an uncle both named Laverne," and "I love to vacation in Cancún." The catch is, two of the statements are true and one is false. The students then share their three statements with one another or the entire class and vote on which they think are true and false. You are sure to learn some interesting trivia about your new students.
• Classroom Decor -- Bulletin Board Headlines. Whether you buy ready-made letters or cut your own for bulletin boards, there are some tricks for putting them up. If you're centering the head on the board, mark the center of the board with a piece of tape, then lay out the letters on a table. Find the center of the headline, and begin putting up the letters from the center, working your way out to both ends. A mistake often made is to space letters too far apart. Headline letters are usually set tighter than small letters; it won't hurt if the letters touch. Rounded capital letters like O and C are really taller than squared-off letters like A and M.Make sure they extend beyond the imaginary top and bottom lines formed by the other letters.

IDEAS FOR MANY AREAS OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk includes a number of great ideas from teachers who've used them! Some of the best tips from this site include:

• Organization. Make a substitute folder early in the year. Include class lists, fire drill rules, seating charts, alternative schedule information (like late-day schedules), and a generic plan for the day. Then create a form on the computer for your regular class schedule. On this form, you can also include the location of teacher's guides, a list of helpful teachers, procedures from the office, and your discipline rules.
• Bulletin Boards. Collect baby pictures and current pictures from your students. Place the baby pictures on one side of the bulletin board and the current pictures on the other side. Give each baby picture a number and each current picture a letter. Have a contest to see who can correctly match the pictures. A variation is to do this with pictures of the staff and faculty on a bulletin board the whole school can access.
• Icebreakers and Energizers. Play People Bingo! Make a 5 x 5 grid, like a bingo grid. Write "FREE" in the center space. In all the other spaces, write things such as "Born in another state" or "Youngest child in family." Fill in all the grids with items of interest to the students. Make a copy for each student. Have the students get the signature of a person who meets the criteria for each block. The first person with a completed card wins.
• Grading. Break writing assignments and other long projects into several small steps. Then grade and record these steps in class as you move from one student to another.

Top 5 Tips for Improving Student Study Skills

Studying can be a major hurdle for students. Making the most of study time can be particularly challenging as kids head back to school and try to adjust to new classes and sometimes even new surroundings.

With this in mind, EducationWorld offers the following five strategies that target some of the more difficult aspects of studying. Developed by Eileen Tracy, an Oxford-educated expert in study skills, they offer students a new twist on traditional techniques. During the first days of school, try devoting some class time to honing these important skills.

#5      Time Management – This is often one of the more difficult issues for students to tackle. Between time spent in class, after-school activities and family time, there is very little left for anything else. Tracy suggests sitting down and creating a schedule that works for the individual.

“While there is (thankfully) no such thing as a perfect time-manager, there are various ways, some of them very structured, others much looser, to organize different types of workloads. You can adapt them to suit your preferences so that you have a timetable that works for you. The point of time management is to give you time off, too. Properly done, timetabling offers a balanced way of working, releasing you from the anxieties that go with disorganization. Many students find that this improves their motivation.”

You can work with your students to help them develop a timetable that provides ample study time as well as appropriate down time to avoid burnout.

These EducationWorld resources can help:

Lessons in Time Management
Eliminating Wasted Time

#4      Essay Planning – A common theme explored at EducationWorld is the trepidation many students feel when required to write something. They often feel as though the ability to produce a clear and concise thought on paper is beyond them, and Tracy believes that this is due to a lack of forethought. She suggests that thoroughly planning out the essay before sitting down to write it can be a big step toward improvement:

“Planning takes time and practice, which is why students often try to skip this crucial stage in their hurry to start writing (particularly in exams). ...This is counterproductive: a well-structured essay, rich in analysis, well-argued and relevant, scores many more marks than something that you try to work out as you go along. Examiners’ top complaint is that students don’t answer the question. That’s because most students don’t plan.

By learning to plan, you can develop your ability to read and interpret, to create logical links and to think laterally. You can stop agonizing over how to introduce and conclude your essay. All this will save you hours of redrafting. And in exams, you’ll score points by the power of thought rather than by purely relying on memory. Knowing that you can do this even under exam pressure is a great confidence-booster.”

Even if students have received some instruction on planning before writing, teachers may want to either reaffirm those previous lessons, or add to them. The more students plan, the better their writing will become.

For example, check out these EdWorld resources:

Writing Lessons and Activities for Every Grade
How to Write a Five-Paragraph Essay

#3      Memory Tricks – Mnemonics is a very old technique, but one that still works. On its face, it may seem a bit silly, but for many students this is far more effective than strict memorization. Tracy recommends making the process fun:

“Mnemonics are a huge variety of creative 'tricks' which stimulate your right brain, making it easier to retain all kinds of information than by rote learning. Mnemonics involve making imaginative associations, so students with good imaginations love these techniques. (They can also help you to regain your imaginative powers if these have been lost.) They are particularly useful in subjects such as biology, chemistry and history where names, facts, figures, dates and sequences need to be learned by heart. However, they’re also helpful in other subjects: for instance, I used them in my English Finals exams to remember lists of key points and dates.

Mnemonics bring another benefit: they help you to observe what you remember best. This makes you wiser as to how you should process your learning. Mnemonics take all the worry out of relying on your memory and can put some sparkle into your revision.”

EducationWorld offers the following related tips:

Teaching With Mnemonics

#2      Mindmapping –This is a visual form of studying that prompts students to literally draw thoughts and ideas on paper so they can be reviewed visually rather than verbally. Tracy suggests that this technique can be used with students of all age groups:

“Mindmapping offers a terrific shortcut to revision and essay planning. You can also use it for brainstorming. It works for most subjects, particularly arts and humanities, but also some sciences. It’s effective even at the highest levels of university education. It involves sketching out information in a strikingly visual manner, using key words, colors and making use of shapes and space, stimulating your right brain. This encourages lateral thinking. Students who mindmap comment on how easily ideas come to mind with this technique. Mindmaps are also extremely easy to remember. Whether or not you’re any good at drawing, if you’ve got a creative streak, you’ll find mindmapping a liberation in your studies."

On our Tools & Templates page, EducationWorld provides several graphic organizer templates that can help with mindmapping.

#1     Note Taking – K-12 students typically fall into two categories when it comes to note taking; those who write down everything the teachers says verbatim, and those who write almost nothing down. Tracy suggests that the key to knowing how much to write down lies in the students’ ability to pluck out keywords from a lecture:

“It’s not always obvious how to take good notes from books and lectures: often they turn out to be unhelpful if they’re too wordy or too brief. Some students waste time writing everything out neatly or putting their notes into the computer. None of this is necessary. The art of taking good notes lies in identifying key points. This is a very active form of revision which enables you to summarize and absorb vast quantities of information quickly and easily. You’ll save yourself hours of time, and a small fortune on highlighter pens.”

You can help your students with this skill by starting the year off making special note of key points during a lecture. Saying, 'Write this down because it’s important,' lets the students know the idea is a key one. By the end of the first semester, they should have a pretty good read on your lecture style and their note-taking will be better for it."

Explore these EducationWorld note-taking resources:

The Long and Short of It: Note-Taking Lesson
Incredible Shrinking Notes: Boiling Down Important Details
Graphic Organizer: Research Note-Taking Made Easy

kid education

One in twenty students has trouble focusing well enough to read without trouble. How are kids supposed to learn if they can't see the page?

This isn't new information. We've known about the "vision problem" for years.

In fact, not surprisingly, for poor children this problem, is much worse.

Research indicates that:

50% of low-income kids have untreated vision problems

In some underserved areas, the number of children who fall through the cracks is staggering. Optometrists volunteering through the Lions Club found that 47 percent of children had vision problems in schools in West Los Angeles.

And you can't catch these problems with the cursory exams usually done in schools:

Many lay people confuse a vision screening with a vision exam, although the former is but a procedure that's supposed to identify those children who may need further examination. However, the screenings many schools administer even fall short of that. Vision screenings that test only acuity detect 30 percent of children who would fail a professional exam

In fact, cursory exams may actually exacerbate the problem, indicating that a child can see fine and reducing the chance that she will get a comprehensive exam. In other words, poor exams may actually ensure that the problem is never corrected.

How much of the challenge that poor kids face in learning results from incredibly basic causes that have nothing to do with pedaogy (or even with more subtle issues like cultural mismatch, etc.).

How about the relationship between vision and "delinquent" kids?

A key finding was that almost all of the 132 delinquents in the study had learning related vision problems, but only a few had nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism. Common in teens, these refractive problems are a sign that the person has made adaptations to deal with the stress of close work in the classroom. . . .

The lack of such problems in these delinquents indicates that, at any early age, they chose not to deal with close work, Dr. Harris said. Other study findings show the reason why. They simply lacked the vision skills to do close work.

How much of the achievement gap could be eliminated with comprehensive health care, breakfast, and nutrition?

What an incredible tragedy. Even on these most basic levels we find it impossible to support these children.

quality schools

Imagine that 25 years ago that nation's schools were below international averages in math and sciences

Imagine that nation had large differences between schools with affluent students versus those with poorer students

Imagine that nation now has almost no difference in performance between schools with affluent students and those with poorer students

Imagine in that nation teachers are so respected that the best students compete to become teachers, not just for two years, but for a career

Imagine that that nation's schools are now internationally respected

Imagine that our nation might actually be able to learn from what that nation has done

Stop imagining. I'm talking about Finland, as you can read in a piece in today's Boston Globe, by Pasi Sahlberg, titled Learning from Finland and subtitled How one of the world’s top educational performers turned around.

Sahlberg is now director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture. Previously he served as a Washington-based World Bank education specialist. Having lived in the US, he is well-aware of the problems of the US educational system. He is also knowledgeable about international comparisons of schools, for example, the recent PISA (The Program for International Student Assessment) by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), in which yet again Finland was the top ranked nation (ignore the results from Shanghai, which are (a) not typical of China, and (b) where students spend several hours daily in intensive test preparation AFTER a full day of school). Finland was also highly ranked in a international study by McKinsey and Company.

Finland used to have serious problems in school performance, as Sahlberg acknowledges.

Today, as the most recent PISA study proves, Finland is one of the few nations that have accomplished both a high quality of learning and equity in learning at the same time. The best school systems are the most equitable — students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. Finally, Finland should interest US educators because Finns have employed very distinct ideas and policies in reforming education, many the exact opposite of what’s being tried in the United States.

The Finns examined what other countries were doing, and as Sahlberg also writes

The secret of Finnish educational success is that in the 20th century Finns studied and emulated such advanced nations as Sweden, Germany, and the United States. Finns adopted some education policies from elsewhere but also avoided mistakes made by these leading education performers.

We'll talk about the mistakes Finland is avoiding shortly.

First, some argue that Finland is nowhere near as diverse as the US. Sahlberg acknowledges that is true, but also points out that it is becoming increasingly diverse in recent years, with the implication that the additional diversity is not affecting the performance of its schools. Further, as many have pointed out Finland has a far lower level of childhood poverty than does the US, well under 5%b as compared to ours at more than 20%. Yet in Finland differences between schools with substantial numbers of poor children - primarily in rural areas - now perform as well as those with more affluent students in the urban areas. Sahlberg refers to the results of the most recent PISA, where

The best school systems are the most equitable — students do well regardless of their socio-economic background.

.

There are some real differences in the approach that Finland took to achieve the results which now rank it so highly. For example,

Finnish children never take a standardized test. Nor are there standardized tests used to compare teachers or schools to each other. Teachers, students, and parents are all involved in assessing and also deciding how well schools, teachers, or students do what they are supposed to do.

How do politicians and administrators determine how well schools are doing? They turn to

sample-based learning tests which place no pressure on schools, and by research targeted to understand better how schools work.

There is also a culture where parents think teachers who work closely with them "are the best judges of how well their children are learning in schools."

And teachers are respected.

Those are the final words of this new book by Katy Farber. Depending on what statistics you use, we lose up to 30% of new teachers in the first three years, up to 50% in the first five. Some clearly should not have been teachers in the first place. But others bring the passion, knowledge and, at least potentially, the skill we need for all of our students. Some of those we lose early in their career are already great teachers, others are potentially so. The reasons that cost us these teachers also cost us those later in their careers, who all recognize are great.

This book can help us begin to address the problem.

Katy Farber was mentoring another teacher at her school in Vermont when that teacher quit after only two years. She was stunned. Her mentee was enthusiastic, creative, and the kids loved her. Farber decided to study the issue of teacher attrition, why we lose so many so early, and in the process began hearing consistent messages from teachers across the country. This was also at a point in her own professional career that potentially represented a cross-roads for her:

A perfect storm of difficult parents, a new principal, and a new teaching partner brought many of these issues to the forefront for me (p. xiii)

This book is something you can choose to sit down and read through, but the design makes it clear that there are other approaches you can take. After the various introductory materials, there are eight chapters, followed by a brief set of Final Thoughts by the author, a list of references, and an index. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a specific area that is a source of tension and possible disillusionment for teachers. In order, these are

1. Standardized Testing 
2. Working Conditions in Today's Schools 
3. Ever-Higher Expectations 
4. Bureaucracy 
5. Respect and Compensation 
6. Parents 
7. Administrators 
8. School Boards

Each chapter presents a real-life scenario, drawn from Farber's contacts with teachers through conversations, posts on blogs, emails, and other forms of communication. The scenarios are followed by discussions containing thoughts from additional teachers, as well as a list of suggestions Farber describes as "practicable, applicable recommendations for administrators and teacher leaders" (p. xvi).

It is fair to say that while there is no one single reason causing teachers to leave the profession, a large number of the reasons that influence them, and which Farber explores in this book, could be generally classified as experiencing a lack of respect. That lack of respect applies to skill, knowledge, work conditions, salary, treatment by administrators, and treatment by parents.

Let's focus on working conditions for a moment. Teachers have far less flexibility for things like bodily functions and meals than do most menial workers. There are also issues with unhealthy buildings, use of toxic substances to clean. There are real issues of safety. Imagine you have a college degree. Now imagine you may have to go three hours without being able to take a bathroom break, or that you may have a lunch period as short as 15-20 minutes to yourself. That is the real world of conditions for many teachers.

Or consider this. A significant proportion of teachers, particularly at the elementary level, are female. If they are starting families, and wish to breast feed an infant, is there any provision for a teacher to express milk during the school day? Or is our solution going to be that we are going to exclude nursing mothers from being in the classroom, even though we might thereby diminish the pool of highly qualified and effective teachers?

Farber offers thoughtful comments from teachers on all the topics she covers. Because the impact of testing is perhaps the most covered of these, I will not explore the valuable material she offers on that topic. But we should not avoid exploring the related topic of ever-higher expectations. Even without the imposition of such higher expectations, responsible teachers already feel crushed by the demands on the time they have. Increasingly, the demands “are not directly related to teaching students” which as Farber notes, is often the main motivation for teachers to be in the classroom. She also writes:

This state of affairs is exhausting and dispiriting. Many teachers shared that they simply don’t have enough time to do everything that they feel they should be doing. And it is eroding their personal and professional lives. (p. 44)

The advice offered by veteran teachers is to set limits, as one experience suggests to no more than 9 hours of school-related work daily. Yet this can create conflicts for those really dedicated to their students. If, for example, I were to limit my workday to 9 hours, of which 7.5 were in school, how could I conceivably read and correct papers from the vast majority of my 192 students in order for those corrections to be part of a meaningful learning experience? Do I limit the amount of work I assign in order to keep up with it? Do I shortchange the feedback to which my students are entitled? Do I allow the responsibilities of effective teaching to consume time that should be available for things outside of my school responsibilities? None of the three choices is truly acceptable, yet in reality for many teachers such are the options from which they can choose. Choices like this are just one example of the pressures that many good teachers experience, and that can help drive them from the profession.

Hopefully by now you have a sense that that book will connect you with the real experience of real teachers. The structure provides not merely their reactions, but a context from which those reactions flow, as well as material that can help ameliorate some of the problems that are contributing to our losing some of the teachers we really want to keep.

Just that justifies purchasing the book as a valuable reference tool. But that is not all one gets from this book. The final four pages of text, 153-156, are under the title of “Afterward: Final Thoughts” and these pages bring together final conclusions from the wealth of material Farber has provided. There are three sections, titled respectively, Why Teachers Teach,: To Educational Leaders, Policy Makers and Politicians; and To Teachers. In the first, Farber tells that most teachers look beyond the challenges discussed in the book.

They tend to be idealists. They strive constantly to improve their teaching, public education, and the lives of their students. It is our responsibility as citizens, educational leaders, parents, and politicians to support them in doing so. (p. 153)

In the 2nd, directed to those who are not teachers but have a great influence on education, Farber offers 4 points, the last of which is this:

Elevate the dialogue about public education by infusing your comments, thoughts, and ideas about education with respect for the hard work that teachers are doing in America. As you may have noticed from this book and several others like it, teaching is no easy task. Before making broad and sweeping pronouncements about education, think how your comments will forward the goals of educating children and supporting teachers. (p. 155)

Speaking as a teacher, were the public dialogue about education more respectful about teachers, we would likely be less resentful of others who do not understand the task of teaching and seek to impose “solutions” without regard to the real welfare of the students who are our primary concern.

Farber concludes with words directed towards teachers. You have already read, at the very beginning of this review, her final words. In this final portion of the book she refers to words by Jonathan Kozol about making the classroom “a better and more joyful place than when [the students] entered it” (from his Letters to a Young Teacher). Kozol also reminds us that we cannot let our concern for professional decorum overwhelm and suppress our very human need to reach out to and comfort our students. Farber concludes her quoting of Kozol with words from p. 208 of that book directed to teachers: “A battle is beginning for the soul of education, and they must be its ultimate defenders.”

Farber wants teachers to remember why we got into education, to reconnect with our beliefs, use those to fuel our energy. Or as she puts in the final sentence of her penultimate paragraph on p. 156: “Remember your core beliefs about life, learning, and teaching, and then let them guide and refresh you.”

For public education to properly serve our students and our society, we must focus on quality teachers. They are the most important in-school factor. We certainly do not want to discourage the best of them, to continue to see them leave the profession out of frustration.

the future of education

In all of the public discourse of what we need to do to fix public schools and educate our young people for the future, one set of voices has until now been conspicuously absent. It is the voices of teachers.

This new book, put together under the auspices of the Center for Teaching Quality established by lead author Barnett Berry, and with generous funding from the MetLife Foundation, is an important attempt to include the voices of teachers in helping frame the discussion of how we address our educational needs.

Those of us in classrooms, unless we choose to be oblivious, recognize that our profession needs to be redefined. We lose too many good teachers from classrooms because too often the only path for professional and financial advancement is through administration. In the meantime, we see the students arriving in our classrooms changing as society changes. Often we are prevented from changing what we do in order to meet them where they are. We know this has to change.

This book is the product of an extensive discussion among professional educators. Much of it was conducted online. The final product list 12 authors besides Berry, all themselves notable classroom teachers. They are the ones who sat down with him to put together the book as we have it. But that final product also included material offered by others in online discussions through the various arms of the Center for Teaching Quality, especially its Teacher Leaders Network, of which I am member. Thus while I was not part of the actual author group, I appear 3 times in the work. I do not think that disqualifies me from examining the work and encouraging others to read it.

The teachers participating in this endeavor collective bring a diverse set of experiences to it. Renee Moore taught English high school students in the Mississippi Delta, where she now teaches at a community college. Ariel Sacks and Jose Vilson teach in New York City middle schools. Laurie Wasserman has almost 30 years as a teacher of special education. After a distinguished career in a classroom, Shannon C’de Baca has spent a number of years doing online education. Jennifer Barnett now functions as school-based technology integration specialist in rural Alabama. Kilian Betlach is a Teach for America alumnus who was well-known as a blogger and is now an elementary school assistant principal. Carrie Kamm is a mentor-resident coach for an urban teacher residency program in Chicago. Among these and others in authoring group are winners of State Teacher of the Year (including one finalist for National Teacher of the Year), Milken award winners, Lilly Award winners, and so on. All have experience in trying to improve the teaching profession beyond the reach of their own classrooms. One finds a similar range of diversity and an equal amount of accomplishment in the 33 teachers who are also thanked for their contributions in the online discussions in which we took part.

In addition, those functioning as authors were able to participate in webinars with a number of outstanding experts from across the nation, including on expert from Australia.

The result is a book rich in insight, analysis, and suggestions for the future, one that has already received praise from many notables associated with education and teaching. Of greater importance, it is a book that will speak to a wide range of audiences: those who prepare our new teachers, those who administer our schools, those who make policy, and most of all, to those of us who teach now or may teach in the future.

In his Prologue, Barnett Berry makes a couple of key points that help a reader understand the thrust of the book. The authors

...have come together, in harmony if not always in lock-step, about an expanded vision for student learning in the 21st century and for the teaching profession that will, in myriad ways, continue to accelerate that learning. (p. xiii)

They get to this point by examining what works now in order to describe what will likely work and be needed in the schooling of the future. The vision “emerges from a student centered vision” that takes advantage of new tools, organizations and ideas. It is based on four “emergent realities”:
1. a transformed learning ecology for students and teacher 
2. seamless connections in and out of cyberspace 
3. differentiated paths and careers
4. “teacherpreneurs” who will foster innovation locally and globally

These rely on six levers for changes: 1. engaging the public in provocative ways 
2. overhauling school finance systems 
3. creating transformative systems of preparation and licensure 
4. ensuring school working conditions that they know promote effective teaching 
5. reframing accountability for transformative results
6. continuing to evolve teacher unions into professional guilds

Each of these levers and each of the realities could be a separate volume. Thus the authors cannot fully explore the dimensions of each, yet they provide more than enough to lay out a vision that is clearly possible. In part that is because of the experience they collectively bring to the task, and what they have absorb from the webinars and from the exchanges with each other and with those who participated in online discussion.

The aforementioned Prologue is titled “We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine.” It is followed by two chapters that can be considered introductory:
1. The Teachers of 2030 and a Hopeful Vision 
2. A Very Brief History of Teaching in America.

The next four chapters explore the four Emergent Realities, each in some specificity. For example, Chapter 5 explores the 3rd of these Emergent Realities, Differentiated Pathways and Careers for a 21st-Century Profession. In just over 30 pages the authors explore four subthemes:
1. Outgrowing a One-Size-Fits-All Professions 
2. Redefining the Professions for Results-Oriented
Teaching 
3. Teacher Education for a Differentiated, Results-Oriented Profession 
4. Professional Compensation for Differentiated Profession

After these four chapters the book spends almost 40 pages exploring the six policy levers of change before concluding with Taking Action for a Hopeful Future, with a subsection on “What You Can Do to Build a 21st- Century Teaching Profession.”

Perhaps the power of the book can best be understood through the notion of “Teacherprenuerism” as it is explored in Chapter 6. The term first appears near the beginning, with the idea of teacher entrepreneurs serving in hybrid positions that don’t easily fit the normal way we classify teachers. Allow me to offer the paragraph from p. 7 which first presents the idea in some detail, after setting the stage by reminding us how already teachers, many National Board Certified and comfortable with using the tools of the web, are de-isolating teaching and offering cost-effective ways of propagating exemplary teaching practices:

The fruits of those labors have been realized in 2030. About 15% of the nation’s teachers - more than 600,000 - have been prepared in customized residency programs designed to fully train them in the cognitive science of teaching and to also equip them for new leadership roles. Most now serve in hybrid positions as teacherpreneuers, teaching students part of the day or week, and also have dedicated time lead as student support specialists, teacher educators, community organizers, and virtual mentors in teacher networks. Some spend some of their nonteaching time working closely university- and think tank-based researchers on studies of teaching and learning - or conducting policy analyses that are grounded in their everyday pedagogical experiences. In some school district, teachers in these hybrid roles earn salaries comparable to, if not higher than, the highest paid administrators.

Lest one think that a pie in the sky belief about the future, several members of the team that wrote this book - and several of those who like me served as additional resources - already partially function in this fashion. The book posits a day where such teachers would not only be known to wider audiences of parents, community and business leaders and policy makers, but would be respected and listened to. Some of those participating in this process already have that kind of respect, for example, Renee Moore, who has served on the boards of both the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and as the first educator still in the classroom on the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (California). John Holland has served as a classroom teacher, a blogger for the Pew Charitable Trust blog Inside Pre-K and moderates an online community of accomplished teachers. Others have similar experiences of attempting to create hybrid roles where they can leverage their expertise and knowledge while remaining at least partially classroom based. They use their experience to project to the future they envision. The process has begun already, but the authors are talking about something more than selling one’s good lesson plans on E-bay. As John Holland notes in Chapter 6,

The combination of self-publishing and the use of the internet as a platform for communication has already given rise to the “communities of practice” around topics ranging from lessons in how to teach fractions to using brain research to perform the teaching act as the highest levels. Teacherpreneurs will increasingly be leaders in these communities, which will stretch far beyond the confines of their school or district - a virtual domain where they are able to impact the profession on a large scale. (p. 143)

As more teacherpreneurs appear they will serve as a primary agents in developing connected learning. As we get more teachers who have greater facility in using the power of the web, not only will teachers be less isolated, but the nature of teaching will begin to change, and radically, as Emily Vickers notes

Teachers will, in fact, be orchestrators of learning - a concept we talk about today, but one that will force itself upon most everyone who expects to be a teacher in 2030. (p. 145)

In part this will be because students will be accustomed to different ways of obtaining information. We are already seeing this among our current students. They know how to quickly obtain information, although we may still have to guide them in how to evaluate the information they obtain. They are comfortable building websites and increasingly also putting together wikis. It is incumbent upon the educational professionals to adapt what we do not only to meet our students where they are now, but also to anticipate how much this will change the nature of what we do. Teacherpreneurs will be key to a successful transition to a new approach to education.

creative education

Some policy makers, education bureaucrats, and pundits use crisis-laden narratives that the public education system is in collapse and make calls for the overhaul of public education. They send a message about a lack of global competitiveness and impending economic slowdown and often use rankings from international tests as their example of a faltering education system. Their solutions coalesce around programs that seek to standardize, control, and homogenize public education via programs like the Common Core State Standards and national testing under the banners of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).

There seem to be some underlying assumptions with the proposed solutions for perceived low levels of global competitiveness proffered by some policy makers, education bureaucrats, and pundits: 1) International test rankings are worth pursuing; and 2) standardized programs will increase the creativity of students in United States public schools. Colleagues and I have dealt with the first claim in multiple arenas. The second claim is more interesting to me because data exist that raise questions about that assumption.

Multiple down-stream indicators of overall creativity from students who were educated without curriculum standards and large amounts of imposed state testing exist that allow us to get a sense a of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship from a less standardized system of education from the accomplishments of adults ages 27 to 38. One indicator is the Global Creativity Index, produced by the Martin Prosperity Institute (2011). The United States ranked second behind Sweden, and ahead of countries like Finland, Denmark, Australia, Norway, Japan, Germany, and Singapore. China ranked 58th.

The United States ranked third on the overall Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (Acs & Szerb, 2010), behind Denmark and Canada and ahead of countries like Japan, China, Singapore, and Finland. The United States ranked sixth on the index of Entrepreneurial Attitudes, behind countries such as New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Sweden. The United States ranked ahead of Finland, Norway, Germany, Japan, and Singapore. The United States ranked first on the Entrepreneurial Aspirations Index and sixth in the world on turning those aspirations into reality once again ahead of Japan, Germany, Singapore, and Finland.

The Global Innovation Index ranked the United States fifth in the world behind Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Netherlands (Dutta & Lanvin, 2013). China ranked 35th. Some other outcomes of creativity and innovation include utility patents. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (2012), the United States was granted 121,026 utility patents in 2012. The rest of the world combined for 132,129 utility patents, only 11,103 more than the United States alone.

The number of scientific papers published is a leading indicator of creativity, albeit scientific creativity, and innovation. And, contrary to the assumption that the U.S. is lagging in creativity due to a lack of standardization, U.S. scientists – ranking first in the world – published 3,049,662 scientific papers in 2011 (Thomson Reuters, 2011). Citations provide an indicator of the level of acceptance of scientific ideas and also of how well those ideas have been vetted and determined to be worth pursuing. Papers from U.S. scientists garnered 48,862,100 citations.